Milton Keynes College wants to turn Bletchley into an Institute of Digital Technology

An Enigma machine used to transmit coded messages during the Second World WarALAMY

Few buildings can lay claim to having played such a vital role in 20th-century history as Block D at Bletchley Park. It was here during the Second World War that the bulk of the intelligence work that led to cracking the German Enigma code took place. Gordon Welchman, the maths genius who made a critical tweak to Alan Turing’s deciphering machine, had his office at the heart of the block’s maze of corridors and windowless rooms.

Yet today it lies derelict and asbestos-ridden. The building was not restored after Bletchley was declared a conservation area in the early 1990s and is not open to the public. Equipment collects dust and paint peels off the ceilings.

Happily, the decades of neglect could soon come to an…

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